Finance, Rule of Law and Human Rights in China

Finance has become an indispensable vehicle for economic development in emerging economies. Such economic progress involves a number of human rights implications which affect financial products, the entitlements of the banking sector itself as well as broad matters of socio-political and -economic justice. Such asymmetries and inequalities find their way into those debates on financial reform and regulation where a tension persists between the sustainability of economic objectives and political stability in fast-developing economies and especially in mainland China. Thus, financial governance and regulation has to take into account these various stare- and stakeholders to match both the short-term profit goals of the financial sector and the longterm socio-economic, environmental, political objectives of the nation in question. Such balancing act will proof to be crucial to ensure further market access, financial innovation and accountability for bankers, investors, regulators, and policy-makers alike. It remains to be seen how China will be in the position-both ideologically and economically-to offer such guarantees in the short or long-term and resist or accommodate the forces of the international financial markets